


My Blue Heaven

by alchimie



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, Character Death, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Heavy Angst, M/M, POV Second Person, Season/Series 05, to a degree
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-10
Updated: 2017-01-10
Packaged: 2018-09-15 17:30:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,174
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9248159
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alchimie/pseuds/alchimie
Summary: On the eve of Sam's death, he attempts to seek comfort in his friend. Castiel gives him more than comfort, instead trying to make the most of Sam's remaining time on Earth.





	

**Author's Note:**

> This is my first attempt at doing something for the Weekend Writing Marathon on Tumblr. My goal was to write a fic over 5k over the course of this weekend, which I accomplished here! This is a simple idea I had in my head for a bit that I thought I would try to crank out for the challenge. I might even try to do the WWM more often.
> 
> And speaking of Tumblr, I have made a Tumblr for my writing [right here](https://alchimiewritings.tumblr.com/)! I will be writing smaller pieces there as well as using it for updates and other fun things, hopefully.

Tomorrow night, you must die.

Tomorrow night is the night you will save the world by giving up your own life, your own soul. You will go out in a blaze of glory to defeat Lucifer, or you will die in the process and allow the end of the world. Win or lose, you will die.

Surely, this thought should not be so strange to you. All your life you have been spent waltzing around with death, twirling around alongside the ominous figure, looking it directly in its frozen eyes with a smile, moving closer to it with each calculated step but never quite catching its cold embrace. You were nearly taken down by it once before by a swift stab to your back, but that was never destined to be the end of your life. Long before your mother conceived you, before her mother conceived her, you were chosen to be Lucifer’s vessel, to either be the weapon he uses to conquer the Earth or the poisonous apple that deceives him into his own demise. All your existence has been leading up to this day, this pivotal day.

Your hands cannot stop shaking at the thought. Your brother is fast asleep, somehow, when the clock strikes midnight.

You have seen death your whole life, why should it bother you so? Every week you travel to some remote part of the United States and witness it, again and again. People older than you dying, people younger than you dying, people killing each other for no reason at all but disgusting greed, dead people killing the living for revenge, any breed of murder out there. You’ve seen more dead bodies than movies, and don’t even get started on the number of ghosts you’ve seen. If you had a penny for every time you dug up a grave to burn a corpse, you’d become the next corporate billionaire. No one knows death quite like a hunter, and yet the idea of your life coming to an end feels beyond your comprehension.

To be fair, the circumstances aren’t exactly the greatest. If the plan doesn’t go completely the way it should, if you do not manage to do the impossible and overtake Lucifer—a damn archangel—in your own body, the world will end as we know it. Darkness will reign over, and you will slowly fade out of existence as Lucifer kills everyone you love and cherish. Unless he decides to destroy you first, which is far more likely with the plan you’re putting into place. All he needs is his yes from you, and then your soul is useless to him.

And what happens if things do work out? Oh, right, you grab Lucifer really tight and jump down into Hell with him. You will die instantly and be sent into eternal damnation with a furious archangel with nothing to do in his cage but torture you for eternity.

All your life, you have felt the weight of the world on your shoulder. You were like a young Atlas with how you constantly were suffocated by all the responsibilities of being the perfect hunter, the perfect brother, and the perfect son. Especially these past few years since you dropped out of college, everything seems to be life or death, save the world from evil or die trying. Still, nothing compares to the globe hanging on your back now as you look into your short future.

You can hear your brother’s snores from the next room over within Bobby’s home, and the thought strikes you. Will you never hear that sound again? The noise you heard every night without fail across the motel rooms? Will you never be lulled to sleep again by the rambling of a television set after Dean falls asleep watching late night sitcoms? Will you never get to relax after a long hunt, pop open a can of beer, and just get to enjoy your brother’s company again? You think of Dean up late at night, drinking alone in an empty room, and you feel yourself breaking inside and out.

Life is not always just work with no play. You are losing so much more than just a future. You will never again sit on the edge of a pond, fishing on a beautiful summer day with Bobby. You will never again join your brother and your surrogate uncle for a trip to a second-run movie theater, smuggling gas station candy in your pockets and a can of beer in your coat. You will never see the fireworks on 4th of July being shot off by Bobby’s redneck neighbors. You will never sit on top of the hood of the Impala with your big brother, watching the sunset changing colors until everything turns dark and you start to see the stars. You will never sit in a cheap diner, eating the closest thing to a home cooked meal with the two men that are your family.

There is so much of the world you will never see. So many places you will never be. Books you will never read, food you will never taste, sensations you will never feel.

And you will never know how Castiel feels. The angel that lifts your aching heart every time you see him, the proof that something more beautiful could and does exist, the creature that always created a small beacon of hope within you. You may even be able to call him a friend now, after all that has happened in the span of time since you first met him. Only a year ago, yet you feel like an entirely different person than the boy with the demon blood.

Castiel.

It’s 1:00AM now, and you feel as if you will never be sleeping at all tonight. How could you sleep at a time like this? Still, everyone else around you has taken to bed, but you still ache for comfort and for companionship.

With everything going on, you should not bother him. Who knows what Castiel is up to at this hour, and you’ve never exactly called him out of the blue like this before. You have no idea how he would respond to something like this, and yet your soul aches for him. As childish and foolish as it sounds, you need him in this moment, even if it’s a false sense of comfort. You don’t need some impossible requited love on your last night. You just need to feel that someone else is there, and that someone else cares about you. Perhaps that is selfish, but maybe you earned the right to be selfish for this one night.

With your mind ablaze, you fall down to your knees, clasp your hands together tightly, close your eyes, and you pray.

“Castiel, I don’t know if you can hear me right now. I don’t even know how much you would care if you did, but—I need someone here with me right now, and I don’t know who else to turn to, I really—I just—” You feel your throat tightening up as you try to muster through the difficult words. “Things aren’t good, man. Things are very bad. I don’t—I don’t know how to deal with all of this by myself, and I just—This shit is stupid, I’m sorry. I need someone right now. I-If you’re not busy.” You sigh, cutting off your rambling before you could make this moment worse. “That’s all. Uh, yeah, thanks. Amen.”

Hopeful, you open your eyes and look around you.

Nothing.

You wonder if he even has the time for you now. You wonder if he even heard the damn prayer. You wonder if he’s laughing at you wherever he is, for thinking your last minute panic is worth his time at all, especially when everything is teetering on apocalypse.

“Stupid motherfucker,” you mutter, rising to your feet. “Stupid, dead motherfucker.” This is your last night on Earth, and you are wasting it completely. Calling after angels like it’s going to help you in the least. You should be preparing, training, doing something of importance instead of pitying yourself and sobbing at angels. You’re pathetic.  
Why would he ever come for you?

Shaking with all the emotions pent up inside you, you want to scream. You want to cry. You grab a leftover bottle of beer sitting on the table and throw it towards the wall. Before you can hear the sound of it shattering, it gets caught in the air before being sent back to its original spot on the table.

You turn around, swallowing back whatever feelings had been starting to leak out of you, and you see him.

He looks almost as beautiful as the first time you met him, and you fill with the same butterflies as that encounter. The angel, the living proof that something bigger than this washed up life you had been granted exists, that there is some more meaning to the world. You struggled all your life keeping some sort of faith in the line of work you had to do, and he was the very proof that you weren’t foolish. At least, that’s how it had seemed the first time you met him.

Regardless of what happened, you still have faith in him. The other angels have warped your beliefs, but he is your friend, your personal connection to something larger. Things might have begun bumpy, but you believe in Castiel.

“Sam?”

He stares at you with those cold blue eyes, and they look wider than usually. His expression is far less severe than you are used to with his raised eyebrows and pale mouth slack. He almost looks concerned.

You wonder to yourself if this will be one of the last times you see those blue eyes. If this will be the last time you hear that scratchy, low voice. If this is the last dialogue between you and Cas.

“Sam, are you all right?”

No, Castiel, you are not all right. Tomorrow you are going to die. If you are lucky, your actions won’t take Castiel down with you.

“Sam, why did you call me here? What is going on? Are you hurt?”

“Y-you shouldn’t speak too loudly,” you say gently. “You might wake up everyone else.”

Cas places his hand on your shoulder. You blink and suddenly you are somewhere distant, out in the open night with the full moon hanging above you, partially covered up by gray clouds.

“Answer me. Please.”

“I’m sorry for calling you up like this. I know I should probably be getting some sleep right now with everyone else, but I can’t, I just—” You stop to hold back the cracking in your voice. Each word is getting harder and harder to say. You realize too late that you have no clue how to communicate what is going on inside your head to the angel. 

The concern in Castiel’s expression grows. “You prayed to me because you are suffering from insomnia?”

You shake your head.

“Then what is it?” Cas lowers his hand from your shoulder. “I want to help you, Sam. In any way that I can. I cannot do that if you don’t answer me.”

With your eyes moving away from the angel, you slowly sit down on the cold grass. “I don’t know what to do.” You wrap your arms around yourself, as if the gesture could protect you from what’s to come.

Castiel, being what he is, usually seems confused with human expression and emotions. Often times he gets lost in references and idioms, which cause him to miss the deeper levels of human communications. For the first time, though, he appears to understand you as he sits down beside you in the grass and speaks in a soft voice. “You are uncertain about what will happen tomorrow?”

You let out a hard laugh. “Yeah, I guess so.”

“It’s a risky plan. Chances are it won’t work and things will backfire.” You start to second guess whether or not Castiel actually is understanding you any longer until he adds, “But if anyone is capable of doing what needs to be done tomorrow, it is you, Sam.”

You smile slightly at the kind words, but the nice sentiment does not settle down the beastly things within you. Cas senses this.

“It’s more than this, isn’t it? Something else is bothering you besides the task at hand.”

You nod, but say nothing else as your arms tighten around yourself.

“Will you share it with me?” The hand is placed back on you, but this time Cas does not use it to transport you anywhere new. For the first time you can remember, Castiel tries to comfort you. Maybe you had underestimated his capabilities for understand you before.

Taking in a low breath, you turn your head to face him. He seems so close now, closer than ever before. You can see every line on his vessel’s face, all the speckles of stubble along his chin and above his lip, every delicate curve that make up his features. Being so close to the angel makes him look so very human.

You want to tell him everything that hurts inside you. You want to tell him all your fears about tomorrow—or, well, today—and everything you’re scared of leaving behind. You want to tell him the awful things you think about when you see him. You want to tell him the sacrilegious feelings you hold in your heart. You want to beg him to save you somehow from your fate. You want so much, but you know you cannot have any of it.

“I don’t feel ready, I’m—I’m scared of dying. I know, of all the things to be frightened of at this point, but it’s just. . .”

“Death is not an easy thing for a mortal to face,” Cas says, lowering his hand to place it on top of your own. “When you have a shorter existence, you feel as though all your days need to hold a stronger meaning, and so it becomes even harder when your life is cut shorter than the norm. I can’t say that I have ever felt what you are feeling—death is far different for my kind. I have seen mortals die more times than can be recounted. You have every right to feel this way, most of your kind does.”

Your eyes fixate on his pale hand atop yours. “I just feel like there’s so much for me left to do. So many things I haven’t done, so many places I haven’t seen. I feel like there’s so much I’m missing out on because I ended up being some chosen vessel.”

Castiel perks up ever so slightly, oddly enough. “Maybe I can help with that.”

“Help with what?”

“I cannot offer you much in terms of emotional relief, I fear, but I can help you see some of the things you wish, some of the things you haven’t been able to see.” Cas gives you a minor attempt at a smile as he stands up in front of you. “I want to give you this, whatever I can, if it will make this easier for you.”

“Cas—”

“You are giving up your body, your life for the rest of the world. The world owes you these experiences. Tell me everything you have always wanted to see.” Cas extends his hand out towards you again. “I want to take you there.”

*

With the wind blowing through your hair, you feel on top of the world.

“Can they see us up here?” you ask Castiel, looking down at the people about 1000 feet below you. None of them seem to look up and spot you. Sure, the night sky might hide you to some degree, but it is still strange.

“They can’t see us. I’ve put up a special warding. Angels often make themselves invisible when on Earth.”

You look up at the night sky, wondering how it’s still so late on this side of the world. “How many hours ahead is France, again?”

“We’re not in our current time anymore. I took you back a couple days so you could see how the city looks at night. Would you rather see it during the day?”

You shake your head with a bright smile. Paris is beautiful at night with all the stars peering down at you. You wish you could stand here on top of the tower forever. It was a shock to you initially, however. When you told Castiel you wanted to see the Eiffel Tower, you never imagined that he would bring you to the apogee.

“If we’re a couple days in the past, does that mean that we could stay here for multiple hours?”

Castiel nods. “We can stay here as long as you want, Sam. I have a lot of energy to travel around for a while, if you desire that. You just tell me where to go, and I will take you there.”

You content yourself with staying in that very spot for what must have been at least an hour more, just staring down at the beautiful sight beneath you. You wish you could be there forever, taking it in, but you know that there is so much more to see during your last hurrah. You need to make the most out of it before Castiel must inevitably send you back to present time.

Your heart aches again as that thought creeps back up on you. For some time, you had forgotten about the whole situation, immersing yourself completely in this fantastical, impulse vacation. When thoughts of death creep back into your mind, you decide it’s time for the next stop on Sam’s wild ride.

“I want to see the Great Wall.”

And in a blink, you’re there. You stand at what must be one of the tallest points on the wall atop a hill greener than anything you’ve ever seen before. It feels like what must be a cool spring morning as you see the sun rising in the east, bringing light to the gray stone. Not a cloud can be spotted over head as you start advancing along the path of the wall, pure excitement glowing inside you. You pass by men in ancient-looking armor that walk past as if you were not there. You must still be under the invisibility warding, probably for the best. The guards didn’t look too nice, and you don’t know a lick of anything they might speak. Still, witnessing the people almost feels as amazing as the Wall itself. How far back had Castiel taken you?

You almost forget that you darted away from the angel until he reappears suddenly in front of you.

“What _year_ is this?”

“1450. We’re right in the middle of the Ming Dynasty currently.”

“This is amazing,” you whisper, stepping over toward the ledge to peer at the lush, green land all around you. “I just want to walk the whole thing, see every stone and every step.”

“That could take a very long time. You might exhaust yourself along the way.”

You laugh, a pure and genuine laugh, at Castiel’s comment. Finally, you said something that went over his head once again.

While you are far from accomplishing that goal, you do enjoy a long walk along the historic structure. You make it probably four miles before the exhaustion starts to take over you. You almost start to feel sleepy finally, but you refuse to give up now. You push through the tired feeling as you make your next request to the angel.  
You never traveled outside of the country before, apart from a trip once to the Canadian side of Niagara Falls. You definitely have never travelled outside of the continent, however, and now Castiel brings you from each corner of the world to the next, traveling through literal time and space on this incredible adventure. You can’t imagine a time in your life that you decided where to go based on your own interests and desires alone; all your life has been traveling from job to job, following your father or eventually your brother around. The only break you ever had from that was Stanford, and even then you knew you were never all that far away from the other two Winchesters. You were a perpetual dog on a leash, and now you’re a bird out of its cage. Your angel has given you wings.

The next stop on the journey is the Sahara Desert, something that the angel gives you a strange look for before transporting you there. Maybe it was an odd pick to follow the two before, but you had always been interested in it. You think back to middle school, when every geography project you had at every school was on the Sahara Desert. You were the first smart ass in class to bring up every possible fun fact—“Did you know that the word ‘sahara’ is just Arabic for desert? So it’s actually just the Desert Desert” “The Sahara is the third biggest desert in the world. The first is actually Antarctica. Isn’t that so cool?” For a second when you first arrive, you open your mouth to say one of these facts before stopping yourself.

“What is it?” asks Castiel.

With a smile, you shake your head. “Nothing. It’s just—” You almost don’t. You try so, so hard not to succumb, but eventually you have to, you just _have_ to. “Did you know that the name ‘Sahara’ comes from the Arabic word for desert?”

Castiel chuckles, and the noise almost sounds bizarre coming out of his mouth. When was the last time you heard a genuine laugh coming out of the stern-looking angel?

“I did know.” He makes a sound almost like a sigh. “I’m going to miss you, Sam Winchester.”

After about a half hour just resting on the warm sand, watching all the little (and big) creepy critters, and living your peculiar childhood nerd fantasy, you and Castiel take a detour over to the Pyramids nearby. You sit in awe from afar as you watch them being built, and then in even more awe as Castiel takes you forward in time to when the last one was completed. You circle around the immense structures, running your hand along their walls and even taking a peek within a few of them. You laugh at the thought of a curse at this point in your life. What more could anyone even do to you? The impending doom now made you feel almost immune to what terrors more the world could bring at you. Tomorrow—or whatever day it was in relation to the year you are visiting—you have to face off with the literal devil. No one else could ever possibly touch you. In your death, you have found a strange form of strength, a weird new brand of courage that made you unafraid of everything else.

Next comes the Colosseum. Castiel almost transports you to the time when it was most active, but you decide that you would like to see this one just as a structure. Something about gladiators coming together to murder each other just feels a little too gruesome for the time being. You can deal with blood and guts later on. Even without the “full experience” that the angel is trying to provide, you find delight in spending hours walking through the rows where the crowd once gathered. You sit where they once sat on the hard stone, looking up towards the sky. Whatever day he is in now, the sun is out and the clouds look like small, puffy animals easing along the blue skies. You get lost in your thoughts as you remain settled beside Cas, looking back towards him from time to time.

“Thank you, Castiel,” you say, breaking the long yet comfortable silence. “For all this, for everything.”

You lean over and embrace the angel, who seems stunned and frozen from the gesture.

“This is the part where you hug back,” you murmur. After another beat, you feel his smaller arms wrap back around you, easing into the hug. More so than remain in this location in time, you wish that you could stay locked within the angel’s warm arms forever more.

All the traveling locks you inside a bizarre fantasy in which you think this can go on forever. You imagine spending the rest of your existence with Cas, journeying over the world again and again from era to era. Next stop from the Colosseum is the Taj Mahal, then a trip to Machu Picchu, then a visit to the Hanging Gardens of Babylon during their height, then a stop to walk along the mysterious Nazca Lines, then a stroll through the ruins of Pompeii (along with a peek back at the city before it turned to ash and dust). Castiel takes you underwater to see the Great Barrier Reef and up in the clouds to look at the top of Mount Everest.

With every stop on the journey, however, you can see signs of fatigue grow on Castiel. Dark circles start to form underneath his blue eyes, and he gradually moves slower and slower. You both have been traveling from wonder to wonder for over a day, maybe even a couple, but you have remained abuzz with excitement. Sure, a small sense of tiredness scratched at the back of your brain, but the pure rush of exploration has kept your mind alit. Unfortunately, using so much power appears to take up so much of Cas.

You try to ask him if he feels fine, but most of the time he changes the subject before you can ask him much. He becomes oddly stubborn and persistent until the two of you are watching the Aurora Borealis from within a lofty, comfortable hotel and he yawns.

Angels don’t yawn.

“Cas? You okay?”

Castiel sighs. “We may not be able to continue much longer. I’ve used up quite a lot of strength. We may need to end soon.”

Your heart sinks at the very thought, but you understand. As much as you would love to live in this fantasy forever, you have a real life to go back to. A real life that needs to be finished.

“I know,” you mumble, closing your eyes.

“Sam.” Cas grabs your hand, causing you to open your eyes again to look at him. An idea seems to come to him, almost like a figurative light bulb going off above his head. “You don’t have to go back. Not yet, at least. I could—I could leave you somewhere a little while longer. You could live another decade or two, make up for all of the experiences you might feel you haven’t gotten yet. Meet someone, raise a family, do whatever you still need to do. I could give that to you, and then you can face him.” Cas's hand tightens ever so slightly around your own. “You don’t deserve this. If I could free you from it, I would, but this could buy you more time to prepare yourself.”

In this moment, something hits you. In Cas’s voice there is a slight desperation shaking up his usual gravelly tone, as if the thought of sending you off to war hurts him, too, more so than you would have expected. Maybe this, all of this, has meant a lot more to Castiel than you originally thought.

You cannot help yourself. You fight it back as long as you can, but eventually tears unleash themselves upon your cheeks before you burry your face behind your hands.

The angel embraces you, pulling you close against him as you cry out onto the shoulder of his khaki trench coat.

The emotional outburst is short lived, and while you start to cool down, you almost consider the option. Ten or twenty more years would be better than any demon deal he could have gotten, not to mention no asshole would be trying to screw you over with it. Then you think of a life without your brother, with your family, and without Cas. What good would a whole new life be at this point when all it would be doing is putting off your inevitable fate?

Wiping away stray tears, you lift your head up, shaking your head. “I don’t want to run anymore.”

“But Sam, it's not running, you could live almost a full life—”

“I need to do this.” You take a deep breath. “I’m ready for this. I think.”

“Are you sure?”

Your eyes lock for a silent second. If you did not know any better, you would almost think that you could see Castiel’s eyes becoming slightly red-rimmed. As unromantic as the moment feels to you, this could be your last chance. “There’s one last thing I want to do, and then I want to go back to when we left, and I want to sleep for the last time.”

Letting go of you, Castiel nods. “Anything.”

You lean in towards him and cautiously press your lips against his. The action is peculiar and uncomfortable at first until it dawns on the angel what is happening, and Cas begins to kiss you back. Both of you are tender and extremely careful with the other, as if just a touch too hard could shatter either of you to pieces like thin glass. Even with all the caution, your heart swells up like it never has before, kissing the man—or, well, not man—of your dreams under the most beautiful lights the world has to offer.

Reluctantly, your lips eventually have to part. Up close, Cas looks even more fatigued than a few moments ago, his condition worsening exponentially. For him to be able to regain enough energy for whatever is to come tomorrow, he would have to bring you back as soon as possible.

“I’m going to miss you, Sam Winchester.” You recall now that Cas said this once before, earlier on your journey. You hadn’t paid much mind to it then, but now it shakes your very core.

“I’m going to miss you, too, Castiel.”

"Good night, Sam."

This time, the angel moves in to press his pale lips against yours. This kiss goes deeper than the previous one and lingers on your lips far longer. When it has to end and the lips disappear, you open your eyes.

You are no longer in a different continent or a different era. Instead, you sit once again in the kitchen in Bobby’s run-down home. Castiel is long gone, but you almost can taste him still on your lips. Picking yourself up off the floor, you make your way over to the room where you hear your brother’s noisy snores. It is finally time to go to sleep.

“Good night, Cas,” you whisper into the night before drifting off.

The next day, you let the devil in.


End file.
